Parents

A number of years ago at NAIS, I paid to attend one of those pre-conference workshops.  Actually, my school paid.  Michael Thompson was the presenter and I think he is simply amazing.  I have heard him numerous times; you may have, too.  You probably know the name: he’s a guru in the independent school world and a god in the boys’ school world for his expertise as a school psychologist. 

His workshop was aimed at teachers about how best to understand and work with independent school parents, particularly around the all-important parent/teacher conference.  I assumed there was something I could extrapolate to our world and to the all-important parent/admissions meeting and relationship.  It was excellent!  23 years in education and it remains one of the best things I have ever attended.

For all of you who haven’t heard Thompson speak about this, he has now co-authored with Alison Mazzola a small book on this very topic: Understanding Independent School Parents.  It’s less than 100 pages with big font and I read it cover-to-cover in less time than it took to fly from London to Moscow.  I highly recommend it and now the entire administrative team at my school is reading it.

The book is in roughly three sections.  1. Understanding independent school parents.  2.  Working with the 95% who are sane and rational.  3.  Tips for working with the insane and irrational!  I think it behooves all of us and our offices to understand in particular who are our parents and what is their perspective.  Less helpful but still worth the read is the strategies for working with them.  Teachers simply have different relationships than we do with parents. 

So, some highlights:

Thompson reminds us that our parents make up the smallest, wealthiest, most successful people in America.  They are highly educated and one, if not both, is highly successful.  They exercise a great deal of control, are often the smartest person in the room, and others typically report to them or defer to them. 

And then they show up at our schools.  And on the topic of children, education, developmental readiness, and curriculum, they are no longer the smartest person in the room, we are in control, and they must defer to us to help them understand their child in the context of education.  This is unfamiliar territory for them, they can easily become uncomfortable, and they may struggle with news or decisions they don’t like (e.g. denied admission, doing poorly in school).

What can we do?

Thompson recommends three steps for the 95%.  1. Engage them about their child.  Ask them about their hopes and fears and then be a good listener.  If you invite them and successfully get them to speak intimately with you about their child, you will create a bond and forever alter the dynamic of your relationship with them.  2. “Claim the child.”  As we all know from the research of NAIS, a good deal of the value added independent schools provide is that each child is “known”.  Demonstrate that you have read the application and supporting documents and that to you their child is a person and you “know them” (as best you can at this point), not just another applicant or a number in your database.  3.  Be professional.  These parents are professionals and so are you so don’t let them forget it.  Just because they may make exponentially more money, doesn’t make you less a professional.  Start and end on time, be prepared, and follow up as needed.  For Lower School admissions folks or teachers, Thompson goes so far as to suggest you be sure to dress the part of a professional and not like someone who spends their day sitting on the floor leading reading circles or playing with dragons.  (Again, that was Thompson, not me!, saying that, dear Lower School admissions colleagues.)

At the end of the day, Thompson reminds us that these are parents we want: they have chosen to allocate their resources for their child’s education.  We have all worked with wealthy parents who could afford our schools but who won’t give up the shore house or the boat or the annual family ski trip to Switzerland and their kids remain in public school. 

Our parents made a different choice, a better choice.

Diversity

Diversity.  I hate the word.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not anti-diversity.  Just the opposite.  I proudly helped bring the Steppingstone Foundation to Philadelphia when I worked there and I think boarding schools are the best opportunity for diversity and it’s why I work in one.  I believe in the broadest sense of the word and feel it is our moral obligation to be sure it’s a cornerstone of any proper, thoughtful education.

But I hate the word diversity.  I’d like to rid it from the vernacular and require everyone to articulate exactly what they mean instead of hide behind this catchall word.  I’ve seen far too many charts and reports and accountings under the umbrella of diversity that are either insufficient or superficial.  Or both.

And what does that look like?  Well, first of all, it doesn’t look like anything.  If you think you can look through the window of a classroom door and count the number of diverse students, then you need to get your head out of the early 1990’s.  Students who appear different can be very similar and students who look similar can be very different.  It is only in opening that door and spending time in that classroom that you can truly appreciate the kaleidoscope of experience made rich by the students found therein.

You can check off the easy categories that jump to mind: race, religion, economic means, sexual orientation, and geography (by zipcode for day schools or by countries and states for boarding schools).  But what about sexual orientation of parents?  But why do we assume parents to be plural?  A student from a mother/father home brings a different perspective than a student from a father/father home or a student who was raised by only one parent or no parent at all and has been raised by another relative.  How about students whose family emigrated from another country?  Maybe their parents don’t speak English at home.  How about the white, urban kid who wakes at 6am in order to take two busses and a subway to get to school who sits next to the white, rural kid who wakes at 6am to work on the family farm before coming to school?  And there are differences in learning styles, personalities, abilities, interests, passions, etc.

The list goes on and I’m sure as you read this a category jumps to your own mind that did not cross mine.  But isn’t that the point?  Isn’t the diversity of diversity the challenge?  It requires a school and an admissions dean to determine exactly what they desire and what they value, and then what they will measure.

Students and education and all of us are made better, made stronger by finding our voice and vocabulary to share our unique perspective, and our values and faith and beliefs are made stronger when we must explain if not defend them to others.  We are made further better and stronger by an openness to “other” and not simply to hear or even appreciate but to be willing to be shaped and changed by other, such that other is now part of us.  The exchange must be two way.  In a strong school setting, each student will find their own voice so that they may share and help others learn as well as develop their capacity to change so that they my learn from and be developed by others.

As ones who have the opportunity to orchestrate the social engineering of our schools, we are obligated to do more than fill charts and check off boxes of diversity.  We are obligated to generate and perpetuate the discussion of what a 21^st century school and education should reflect and to be sure we are doing so from within the classroom and not simply through the looking glass of the classroom door.

Awesome

Welcome to the new year!

The start of school is always so exciting.  For families and for the whole community but I would suggest especially for those of us staffing the admissions office at our schools.  Our work from the last 12 months is literally walking through the front door.  These new students are beaming with pride, proudly sporting our uniforms or maybe a school hoodie they grabbed in our bookstore.  They are anxious and nervous and hopeful and excited.  And so are their parents!

They walk through those doors for the first time with grand plans of what they will accomplish, excited by dreams and goals they will chase.  You scan their faces in the opening assembly, remembering when you interviewed them in your office, or maybe half way around the world.  You remember the endless questions and emails from their parents.  You remember the discussions and debates of the Admissions Committee.  But that’s all behind you now.  They are here and you are here and it is the start of school.  Welcome to the new year.

And then you do what you rarely allow yourself the time to do: you remind yourself—just quietly and just to yourself—that you have changed the trajectory of every kid’s life anxiously sitting in that room listening to new student orientation.  Because of you, they now have immeasurable opportunities found in your school’s programs, offerings, facilities and campus.  They have teachers and administrators who will put them at the center of their lives and challenge, encourage, support and mentor them.  They have peers and classmates who share their academic drive, their commitment to success and accomplishment, and their seriousness of purpose.

In the truest sense of the overused word, what you have done is awesome.

And it doesn’t stop there.  Any school—actually, every school—is shaped by the students who attend it.  The culture, the tenor, the ethos, the character of the place comes from the kids.  You may have an amazing campus and a dedicated faculty and a strategic thinking administration but all of that is for naught if you don’t have the right kids.  You’re the one who recruits and admits and enrolls those kids.  And the school moves in the direction of those students and with their boundless momentum.  Your kids.  The ones who are there because of you.  Before you reset the admissions cycle and your spreadsheets back to zero and launch a new season, stop and take a look around.  Take pride in your work, in your kids.  It will affect the school for generations to come.

You change the lives of children and you shape the future of schools.  You are awesome.  You are an admissions professional.  Welcome to the new year.

St. Thomas Church

If you like flawless liturgy and heavenly music, then you should visit St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City.  It is “the” Episcopal church in Manhattan.  It was founded—and funded—by Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors, Morgans and the rest of the American aristocracy.  You know, all those people with places in Newport!  It also has a small, 5^th-8^th boarding school for boy choristers, with around a dozen graduates each year.

I have recently finished reading “Priest in New York,” by Father Austin, who is the Theologian-in-Residence at St. Thomas.  It is a collection of short essays.  It’s good pick-up/put-down airplane reading. 

Being in NYC, St. Thomas must deal with it’s share of homeless, uncertain, dangerous, and, frankly, questionable people who show up off the street, not seeking God but seeking money or food or shelter.  How do you decide whether to serve or turn them away but still fulfill the mission of the Church on earth?  Sometimes their behavior impacts others, threatens others.  Father Austin writes in his book, Nonetheless, our welcome cannot mean indifference to behavior that undermines the gift it is our mission to offer.  I think it is the hardest thing of all to say to someone, “If you do X, you cannot come here.” And yet, discipline is necessary and is the heavy responsibility of those who care for institutions.  There is no identity without boundaries.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Our role requires discipline.  Our role is a heavy responsibility.  Our role is to ensure identity by providing boundaries.  Our role is to say, “If you do X, you cannot come here.”  I know I’ve written on this before but it is because I think it is the most important work that we do.  The shape, future, tone, and culture of our schools are completely reflective of the students we enroll. 

I had two telephone calls yesterday asking about space for next month.  One was for a day student.  We can always squeeze in another day student if we want them.  This was a student who has been looking at us for 9^th grade in 2013 but now suddenly wants to join 8^th grade next year.  He’s a great kid.  I’m sure we can work it out.  The other kid I don’t know and haven’t met but he’s looking for a boarding space and it would be hard to make it work.  My initial radar has also pinged some possible red flags.  It is, after all, mid-August and they don’t know where he’s going to school in three weeks.

Both want to be here, in part, because of our identity; or, put another way, our reputation.  Not sure how it will play out for each student but I do know I’ll be thinking about the importance of “…no identity without boundaries.”  In the land of my school, I’m the border guard.

So what evidence do we have to support this thesis of the importance of identity and boundaries?  There is subjective perception and there is fact.  Subjective perception: I travel a great deal for work and after two decades in admissions, I have seen the inside of a lot of Episcopal churches on Sunday morning across the U.S. and around the world.  My subjective perception is that the Church is in decline.  It’s nothing like my childhood.  Fact: the membership of the Episcopal Church has gone below 2 million for the first time, from a one-time high of 3.6 million.  Subjective perception: St. Thomas seems packed, no matter when I go: Easter, of course, but then all the other Sundays as well.  Fact: the St. Thomas annual fund for 2012 hit an all time high of over $1.3 million in pledges for the year.

The dots I’m connecting and the conclusion I’m drawing is that despite national trends to the contrary, St. Thomas is thriving.  People are drawn to its identity.  No doubt, St. Thomas has some controversial positions that they don’t hide but that seems to have only helped sharpen and brought clarity to their identity and has not impacted attendance or finances.  On the contrary, St. Thomas, with it’s clear sense of self, is ahead of it peers.

It’s not the first and it won’t be the last time I write about the importance of clarity of mission, knowing who we are, and being the gatekeepers who set boundaries for our schools.  St. Thomas is a good exemplum of the success that can be enjoyed.

Paris

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[This is long and rather personal so be forewarned or just skip it altogether.  There is a professional connection at the end if you make it that far.  And, yes, the picture was taken by me.]

If you’re a regular reader then you know I’m tackling French this summer.  Well, I’m starting French this summer.  It will take a good deal of time and effort to actually tackle it.  Right now I’m in Paris.  It’s Sunday night and I’m on day five of my 16-day trip.  I’m here by myself; I arrived not even knowing one to ten in French; I know nobody over here.  I meet with a private tutor each morning for three hours and am expected to do three hours of drills and study each afternoon/evening.  In between, I’m free to be a tourist.  The scene is set.

Let’s set another scene.  I don’t have a particular film or television show in mind but we’ve all seen this storyline play out.  The patient is in a coma.  The reason why doesn’t matter.  She can hear everything.  Her mind is 100% and she is in command of her intellect and her emotions.  What she has no control over is her body.  She is fully aware but can’t communicate in any way—no blink, squeeze of the hand, wiggle of the ear, zip.  People in the room talk around, about and over her as though she is not there.  She has things to say.  She wants to let them know she’s alive in there somewhere.  She is pained by the misery her condition has caused her loved ones.  She is desperate to know what decisions might be made on her behalf, in which she can’t contribute or participate.  She wants to live.

It is maddening, possibly literally.  This could drive a sane person insane.  It’s frustrating.  It’s angering.  It’s heartbreaking.  It’s even infantilizing.

It’s lonely.

It’s Paris July 2012 and it’s me.  When I first got here, I could barely manage a bonjour and a merci.  Someone taught me how to say my name so I could say it to the passport guy, the front desk clerk, the receptionist at school.  Even then, whatever was said to me I did not understand and could not respond.  With my little dictionary in hand, I could stammer out some nouns: “me, taxi, hotel”.  After three days of lessons, I can accomplish most anything if it can be started with, “I’d like…,” “I am…,” or “My name is…,” or involves counting to ten or pronouncing the vowels.  I still can’t understand any reply and can’t engage in a response.  I have a hard time even engaging in a conversation with my tutor because her English is so lacking.  I’ve been here five days and I’ve had no significant, longer than a minute, meaningful human contact.  I can’t even argue with the television.  I’ve got no English language channel.  God Bless the few people (typically in their 20’s and 30’s) who have had patience with me and/or knew a bit of English.  One taught me how to ask for a receipt.  That’ll please the Business Office.

It’s maddening, frustrating, angering, heartbreaking, infantilizing…lonely.

I don’t post this seeking your sympathy.  On the surface, what an absurd expectation.  “Oh, poor Andrew, in Paris for two weeks.  Rough life.”  As a matter of fact, when I get back, I’m sure I’ll just tell my family, friends and co-workers things like, “What a beautiful city.  Let me show you my pictures.  Can we talk about the food and champagne?”  After all, who dare complain about being in Paris for two weeks?  I go where others only dare to dream.  I’ll dazzle them with my two weeks’ worth of French: surely I’ll know a few more verbs, can complete a sentence, and maybe even count to twenty by that point.  I’ll go back to the solitude of my Rosetta Stone and look forward to it.

No, I post this in solidarity with and empathy for our international students at our schools.  They come over with varying degrees of academic and social English, based on our admissions criteria and the level of ESL support our individual schools can offer them.  But without a friend who is also from Germany or Korea or Spain or Brazil, how lonely their life might be.  I’m here for only two weeks; they’re with us for nine months.  That’s a long time to possibly go without a significant, deep, substantial, authentic exchange with another human being.  No wonder they sit together by country over dinner and speak in their own language.  I got it before.  I really get it now.   

Surely, not all are so lonely.  But surely not none.  These last five days have entirely changed my perspective on them.

Je m’apelle Andrew.

Show me the money!!

Mitt Romney has endorsed Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan.  No surprise.  In turn, Vice President Biden has attacked the plan, and by extension, Mr. Romney for endorsing it.  Again, no surprise.  Here’s what the Vice President said to the candidate (via the media), “Don’t tell me what you value.  Show me your budget and I’ll tell YOU what you value.”

Interesting point.  My first thought was to go down the road about our institutional budgets and how much of it goes to the admissions/marketing function and question if that mirrors the importance, if not pressure, our institutions put on our admissions.  But I often find myself telling my staff we need to focus on what is in our control to fix.  We may not like how other people or offices do things so, instead, let’s focus on our office and operations, where we can affect necessary change and improvement, and strive for excellence.  And then hopefully lead by example.

So instead of the possible depressing exercise of looking at how much resources our schools allocate to our work, I decided to give some thought to how we allocate within our operation those resources we are given.  I don’t know a colleague who doesn’t value having a family visit campus.  Don’t we all believe (don’t we all know??) that we exponentially increase the chance of enrolling a family if we get them to visit?  I also don’t know a colleague who doesn’t think the school’s website isn’t the primary source of information for a prospective family.  Sure, they may learn about us from word of mouth or maybe from an internet search but once our names are on their lips, isn’t their first stop at our own homepage?

“Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.”

So, how much of our budget and human resources are allocated to the campus visit?  Is there someone dedicated to insuring a successful visit for each family?  Do you have funds for training, rewarding, appreciating your tour guides?  And how about that homepage?  Do you have thousands of dollars for newspaper advertising but none to add that key button or functionality to your website?  Can’t find $3000 to reward and retain that awesome young recruiter but spending $5000 per annum on food and beverages for admissions events?

Show me your admissions budget and I’ll tell you what it says you value.  But is that what you really value?  As we go into another admissions year in just six weeks, hopefully it’s not too late to think twice about how and where we deploy our dollars and our staff.

Sun. 1pm-10pm

Bonjour.  I live in a bilingual country and that’s all the French I know.  Shame on me.  Well, I do know a few other key survival words: champagne, croissant, brie, quiche!  So it’s about time I learned French and so I now own the complete Rosetta Stone French programme.

My package arrived last Friday and on Saturday I went to install the software on my computer.  Being somewhat of a tech idiot, I, to no surprise, had problems.  No worries.  There’s a 1-800 support number I can call.  I called it.  They were closed.  You feel my pain.  You, like I did, think I’m doomed to wait until Monday. 

Think again.

Rosetta Stone tech support is closed on Saturdays but open from 1pm to 10pm on Sundays.  I just had to wait 24 hours.  I spent those 24 hours being very curious about these odd hours.  So once I called tech support and got my issue resolved (shocking: I was inserting the dvd’s in the wrong sequence, despite their being clearly labeled!), I inquired about their support schedule. 

You know where this is going: people buy the software while running errands on the weekends and then attempt installation on Sunday afternoon.  So 5pm on Sunday and not 9am on Saturday is when RS support is needed and so that’s when they’re available!

When are we needed?  It was something we discussed at this year’s Essex Institute.  Shouldn’t day schools have evening open houses for busy two-income parents?  Maybe even interviews a few times at night during the busy season to accommodate those parents?  Boarding schools work with students from around the world and from many time zones.  Why do we force them all into our 9am to 5pm workday?  Or maybe we don’t and we’re losing families because we’re not available to support them when they need us.  Is it so crazy to ask a staff member to take a 4pm to midnight shift once and a while to be available on the phone or maybe an online chat?

I read something related just recently about social media.  (I apologize I don’t recall the source but I fully confess this isn’t my own idea.)  The advice was to look and see when our blogs and Facebook accounts are the most active and to post then.  Not to do so during our own 9am to 5pm work hours when our prospective students are in school.  Like good teaching, we have to meet them where they are.

My last post was about thinking what’s at the center of our offices.  I guess this one asks us to think about what time to be there.

Au Revoir!

At the center

 

Living in Canada, it’s been a while since I was in a Barnes& Noble.  And given with what haste big bookstores are closing, it’s no surprise.  They’re not easy to find.  But what was a surprise was when I walked in and found that the Nook display and sales area had taken over the center of the floor, replacing what had traditionally been the spot for Barnes & Noble customer service.

You remember customer service, right?  Helpful folks who would look up books for you and then walk with you into the stacks to find the book, as though you couldn’t manage the convoluted alpha-by-author’s-last-name filing system of Barnes & Noble.  Those friendly book geeks were eventually supplemented by kiosks, on which you could look up your own book, thank you very much.  But if you waited just a moment, someone would be right back from helping a customer over in 14^th Century Danish War and Religion and be able to help you next.  Amazon couldn’t touch this!

So imagine my surprise when there was no longer a customer service center in the middle of the store.  I write this as I head off to the Essex Institute for Enrollment Management.  I’ve lost track of how many years I have gone. 12?  14 maybe?  But I am suddenly remembering a conversation from last year’s meeting.  We were looking at school taglines or admissions mottos and were challenged to ask ourselves if the mottos were about the school or the student.  Where was your focus?  It was an insightful, interesting exercise and conversation.

Essentially, it asked what we had at the center of our schools: the school itself or the students?  Nooks or customers?

And this reminded me of an early post by Fran Ryan, Assistant Headmaster at Rumsey Hall School, on SSATB’s “Right On Time: the ALCBlog”.  Fran is a veteran at helping families navigate the waters of secondary school admissions but has recently had to “self-navigate” his family as they went through the process for his son.

Fran challenges us from his new perspective by stating, “In schools, admission processes seem to generally serve the efficient running of the office. That does not necessarily translate into creating a meaningful experience for a family examining a school.  Make sure that your process makes sense for your prospective families. Make sure that it is efficient and easy to manage, which is different from being easy.”

In other words, make sure that service, and not sales, is in the center of your “store”.

Electronic Toolbox

I have a meeting with the Board of Governors in less than hour.  Why wouldn’t I be working on a blog post??  Well, frankly, my head and my notebook are so full of stats, charts, quaint stories, tales of woe, and predictions for the future that my brain needs a rest before I go in the big room.  But one of the things I will be addressing today is our plan to step back and do a serious communications audit this summer.

We have certainly jumped with reckless abandon onto the social media and in-bound marketing wagon.  In the last two years we have launched a very active Facebook and Twitter account.  They are updated almost daily.  We have launched a new website, built for maximum SEO.  We have an equally active blog up and running and we have over 100 videos on our YouTube Channel.  We even have a full-time employee dedicated to the maintenance of all these media.  Our proverbial toolbox is full.  Our proverbial cup overfloweth.

But two statements in the last month have been ricocheting around in my head.  The first comes from the famous columnist Peggy Noonan.  Whether or not you agree with her politics, she is a brilliant writer and her books are wonderful.  The other comes from my dear friend JT Hanley at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California.  He does not have the fame of Peggy Noonan but he should.  He is an educator and a coach without peer.

Talking about President Obama and how his campaign has become expert at mining the internet and the data to be found therein, Noonan, who is not a fan of the president, asks in this column, “If you have fabulous new ways to reach everyone in the world but you have little to say, does that really help you?”  And then my friend JT, speaking on a topic I honestly don’t remember (we were a few martinis and glasses of wine into dinner at that point!), asked, “If you don’t have focus, isn’t your camera just a plastic box?” 

All this got me thinking of our electronic arsenal.  Now that we have built up these resources and filled our toolbox, what do we do next?  We have spent the last two years creating and staffing for this 21st century world of recruitment in which we must be successful but I will admit we have not figured out exactly what to do with it now that we have it.  Or more accurately, we have not figured out the best use of what to do with it.  How do we harness their power, craft the messages, maximize the potential, and build a strategy?

Ask me in September what we accomplished this summer.

Relationships.

I had the personal and professional pleasure to have dinner with a favourite consultant at IECA this month. The real treat was she invited me to dinner—what an honour. You would know her. We all know her. And we all love her. She is kind, patient and has immeasurable time for all of us, all while running her own practice and helping mentor new consultants in the profession.

Around April 10th when we all constantly vacillate between celebration and frustration, I lost one kid each from two key feeder schools to the same boarding school. I’d heard of this boarding school but, frankly, it wasn’t on my radar and I never had reason to think it was in the same league. (To be honest, I knew so little of it, I didn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t in the same league either.) So, I told this to our consultant friend and asked her what she knew of the school.

She loves the school. She has sent a number of clients there over the years. She had great things to say about it and said her clients had all been quite happy there. She respected their mission and felt they held true to who they were, something very important to her. No complaints.

But then the admissions director left.

And she’s sent nobody since.

She doesn’t know the new admissions director. She doesn’t have a contact, doesn’t have someone with whom she can have a frank conversation about a client, someone with whom she can test the waters. There is nobody at that school who will roll out the red carpet for her clients when they visit, nobody to give them an extra bit of attention and to recognize who sent them. She still thinks very highly of the school but her relationships are the key to her confidence in recommending a school. And she has none there now.

 Four days later I had the professional privilege to stand next to Pat Gimbel from Deerfield at a fair in California. Pat has been doing this forever and is a role model and mentor to so many of us. And if you haven’t heard, she’s retiring next year. What a loss for us. But Pat and I got chatting, making note of who was attending the fair. Directors? Other staff? Local parent or alumni volunteers? I noted with admiration and congratulations that she’s enrolled five kids from this prestigious feeder school out of 13 graduates who were continuing onto boarding school. We then talked about the importance of relationships and why someone of her stature from a school like hers still hits the road and travels the world. Pat doesn’t pawn off Asia on someone else. She’s there in the trenches in Korea like the rest of us. And after a grueling admissions year, just weeks after April 10th, she was on that long 6 ½ flight from Boston to San Francisco to attend this fair, at this school where Deerfield is so beloved that they got over 33% of the boarding-bound graduates. She was on the 6am flight back to Boston the next morning to get back to her office. Why does she do this? To maintain her ties and relationships. They are key to her and to her success.

As she prepares to walk out the door, Pat still teaches us by her words and deeds that it is still all about the relationships.

International versus Global

So if you’re one of the original readers of my blog—and Bless You! if you are—you might remember I’ve written on the movie “The Blind Side” before, here. Now, picture it: the Sunday before the return to school after March break. I’ve got about four loads of unfolded laundry piled on the bed. I turn on the television in the bedroom for some background entertainment while I fold, sort, and put away. I happen upon the opening scene of “The Blind Side” and three hours later the laundry is folded, sorted, put away, and I’ve accomplished nothing else whilst I watched this entire movie…yet again. And the irony is I own the DVD so I don’t have to watch it on television, where it gets dragged out almost an hour longer due to commercials. But I do.

If you’ve seen the movie, now picture this scene: Leanne is at lunch with the other “mothers who lunch”. We know the type: our schools are filled with them. And thank goodness, as they’re not the ones asking about financial aid. She has shared with her shocked friends the tales of taking in Big Mike and giving him a home. One of them says, “Why Leanne, you have changed this boy’s life.” She replies, “No. He has changed our lives.”

I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural TABS Global Symposium over March break. More than the pleasure of attending, I had the privilege of helping think about its creation. It involved mostly schools from the USA but there was certainly a respectable representation from other countries, especially for the first time attempt.

In my mind (although I don’t attempt to speak for TABS), this was about the transition I think is necessary of taking American schools with international students and turning them into global schools with global student bodies. I have been at this a long time and I certainly remember and perpetuated the idea of bringing international students to the USA so that we could change them, help them become and understand and appreciate and embrace American values and education. And then help them into American universities. Isn't that their goal and dream? After all, if that wasn’t what they wanted, they shouldn’t have chosen us. "They" could have gone anywhere else instead.

But I think the symposium as well as 21st century schools are about tearing down the “us” and “they” concepts. Like Big Mike and Leanne, they are no longer about the international student being changed by being in our schools but, rather, about our schools open to being changed by the presence of our international students. It's not unlike the movement of the 1990's to change the curricular/departmental title from "foreign" languages (implying an "otherness" to the primacy of English) to modern and classical languages. Or just, simply, languages.

In my free time (as if—ha!), there’s a longer paper in me to write on this topic. My perspective has certainly changed greatly by being in Canada and by observing America and American education from over the border. No matter how long I’m here, that change will be permanent and I will be forever grateful for it. But for now, I’m honored to have played the smallest of roles in thinking about this topic and having participated in TABS’s effort to bring it to the forefront of our collective conscious.

It’s a big idea and a big topic to wrestle to the ground and it means fundamental changes in essentially very traditional and change-averse institutions in how we view our schools, how we view education, how we view our role on the world stage. It’s not easy but I’ve been impressed by those I have seen tackling the concept.

But isn’t that what the 21st century calls and encourages and challenges us to do?

Lessons from Mary

NOTE: this post is based in politics but is not political. Please continue to read without fear of partisanship. As well, no animals were harmed in the production of this post!

Question: what is more entertaining than Mary Matalin? Well, Mary Matalin when she appears with her husband, James Carville. But this past weekend on “This Week” it was just Mary. Being the Republican talking head that she is, she was sharing the many reasons why she believes that President Obama will lose and the public will choose the yet undetermined alternative, whoever he might be.

But one of her arguments was a very clear articulation of the concern I have been expressing for the last three years during our post-Lehman Brothers collapse economy. Her point: the voter in the election booth this fall won’t care about the employment rate, the participation rate in the national labor force, the stock market, or the growth of the GDP over the last three quarters. They will care about what is in their checking account, whether there’s money leftover at the end of the month, and their anxiety over every bill that arrives in the mail.

Her visual: the mom at the gas pump with the SUV watching the pump and the price escalate and escalate. As she talked about this mom, the admissions professional in me saw car seats in the back and lacrosse equipment in the cargo area. She maybe had one of those round, white stickers on her back window and she could be on her way to the meeting of the volunteer parent auction committee. She’s not voting on 8.8% versus 8.3% unemployment. She’s voting on the fact that the pump now reads $84 to fill her SUV’s tank and she knows it won’t be her only visit to the gas station this week.

And those are our parents and our worries. As inflation goes up around 1% and our tuition rates go up 3-6%, we have to worry about those prospective families with their SUVs. They aren’t choosing an independent school because the market recently closed up over 13,000 points or because unemployment has come down slightly. Whether or not they can comfortably afford our schools is determined by what’s in the bank, what’s in the checkbook, and what bills show up near the end of the month. It’s determined by what it costs to fill the SUV and what it costs at the grocery store to fill the family at dinner.

Until any recovery trickles down into the bank accounts of the individual citizen, we are going to have to factor in their daily reality and not the national trends. After all, they pay their tuition from their checkbook, not from the 12 month trailing average of national import/export ratios.

It’s a great and comforting thing to see the economy slowly—oh so very slowly—recovering but it’s not trickling down into the checkbooks. Not yet. Like it or not, like her or not, there’s a few things Mary can teach us about consumer behavior and consumer reality. We should listen.

Starting from scratch

Through a professional connection from my friend Sam Herrick at Live Oak School in San Francisco, I was introduced to the East Bay School for Boys, also known as e.b.s.b.. (And, yes, their graphic is done with that e.e. cummings look.) This is a brand new, single-sex middle school. They opened last year with 17 students; this year they have 90. And as of my visit earlier this month, they were investigating new, larger facilities to meet the continued demand they foresee.

What really struck me about my visit is the incredible thought that went into the design of this school. I had a wonderful tour from the head of school, Jason Baeten, who shared with me the considerations, thoughts, and ideas behind every bit of the space, program, curriculum, philosophy and even their motto: empowering the engaged, thoughtful and courageous men of tomorrow…. We had a great exchange about their choice of “courageous” and he told me about the other words with which they wrestled and why they landed on courageous.

It was a real privilege to think and hear about how a 21st century school was carefully crafted from scratch, how nothing was taken for granted or done “because it’d always been done that way”. They were unencumbered in their construction of this new school, limited by only their imaginations. How daunting. But how exciting!

And then I returned from my trip to the disappointing news that I was losing my wonderful assistant director. With her pending departure this summer and a year-long maternity leave I need to fill in the next six weeks (you read that right: maternity leaves are a year up here!), that’s half the Upper School recruitment team of four! If anyone from the Lower School office or my support staff tells me they’re also leaving, I just may lose my marbles!

But then I thought of e.b.s.b. and paused. They inspire me. And as I type this, I am giving serious consideration to what a 21st century admissions team and office might look like. How has our practice and profession evolved? How, what and why should we be doing things differently than we did ten years ago, fifteen years ago? Two years ago? While staff changes are never easy and the process of hiring is arduous and takes up a tremendous amount of time and energy, when will I next have the gift of considering two full-time positions at once and designing how I might re-allocate those 80 hours a week?

I don’t have any answers yet and I certainly welcome anybody’s input. In the meantime, I’m going to try and tackle this living up to the inspiring and challenging ideals of e.b.s.b.: engaged, thoughtful and courageous….

Lucky us

Recently I was visiting a junior boarding school and I had the rare privilege to surprise an applicant by handing him in person his offer of admission and a $10,000 academic scholarship. The timing worked perfectly (thanks to coordination with his current headmaster) that we were able to receive the necessary school documents and get him through admission committee ahead of my visit.

Over my career I have had the opportunity on occasion to tell a student of their admission in person or over the phone before they got our packet, but this may well be the first time I have hand-delivered it. I have to say, it’s an impressive packet. We put a lot of time and effort in the design and presentation of our offer of admission and in our scholarship awards, and when they can be presented together, it looks darn good. After all, the greater the yield from your first round admits, the less you depend on your wait pool and the more selective you can be.

But I think I will remember forever watching this boy open the folder, start to scan the letter, and, like the sun easing over the horizon in the morning, see a smile start to slowly spread across his face. When he hit the key line in the letter that confirmed where he thought this letter was going, his eyes got huge and his smile even bigger and his head shot up like a jack-in-the-box as he looked at me. And then he looked right back down to finish reading the letter. When he was done, he looked up and he said nothing, the bright glare reflecting off his braces sending the message of his delight. I simply smiled back, shook his hand, said congratulations, and went on my way. We had only a minute for this transaction but it was a wonderfully powerful, simple minute.

By complete coincidence, his parents were up visiting that Sunday afternoon. I had the opportunity to speak with them and congratulate them on his offer of admission and his scholarship. When I saw them, they had not yet seen their son or his packet but they later wrote to me, “we were unable to pry the folder from our son’s fingers over lunch.” I love picturing that lunch in my head! It will carry me through some of the inevitable frustrations that always accompany this time of year in admissions.

We are in the business of changing lives by giving students the remarkable opportunities that come with admission to our schools. What a privilege.

Lucky us.

Tebow

So what does Tebow have to do with independent school admissions? I’m not sure I know. But one can’t help but to be caught up in Tebow-fever. It’s the day of the big game: Tebow vs. Brady. (Actually, Denver vs. New England.) And there is not one but two Tebow articles in today’s Wall Street Journal. That’s right: I’m not talking about the Denver Post or the Boston Globe. I’m talking about the country’s leading newspaper on business and economics. Two articles on professional football and on one particular player. And there’s an article in today’s New York Times and probably numerous papers around the country I did not have the time peruse. And there’s a good one posted to ESPN.com I read earlier today.

Personally, I abhor the excess of professional sport. Individual players make more than the payroll of teachers of most schools and probably some small school districts. And they seem to attract fans who would die before they approved a school board budget that would have an annual impact of $100 in taxes but they pay ten times that amount for season tickets to their local pro team. These premier and famous and overpaid athletes are more often than not—much more often than not—poor role models, have questionable values, and fail to use their influence and fame for good. There are exceptions, of course. Cal Ripken comes to mind. Tebow is currently the most well-known of them at the moment.

Did you know he wasn’t even the starting quarterback for Denver this season? That he saw little play at all last year? And now look how far and fast he has come. Impressive everyone is now talking about him given that he spends so much of his time helping the poor, dying, underprivileged, and downtrodden. He flies the suffering and hurting to every Denver game, home or away. And it’s not just a token. He spends time with them before and after the games, and attempts to corral others to do the same. He speaks of his faith, virginity, Baptist parents, and personal values without shame or hesitation. More than without shame or hesitation, he speaks of them with conviction, humility, sincerity, and power.

He’s a one-man brand and he attracts fans and haters alike. (Yup, sadly one of today’s articles was on those who have grown to hate him and anxiously, sadly await some fall or stumble, personal or professional.) But he is very clear in who he is, what he stands for, and in what he believes. He has won countless fans with his clarity and drawn many followers.

If he were an independent school, he’d be full with waiting lists. Long waiting lists. So what can we learn? Yes, many seem to dislike him and can’t wait for him to fail tonight but many adore him. And isn’t that the compelling argument for a strong brand: to strengthen the loyalty of those you seek and help those who are not a good match to go find their own Tebow elsewhere? Good luck to them.

Know who you are. Own who you are. Share who you are. And do it like Tebow: proudly and genuinely. And the right matches will be lining up at your admissions office door.

The great thing about tonight’s game is that whether or not Denver marches forward, Tim Tebow isn’t going to change.

Thank goodness.